You probably don’t know much about us, so I figure a little intro is in order.

My name, and an important place to start, is Melissa. I’m 30-something, I have 2 wonderful boy-children (insane, adorable psycho’s), and a super-fine husband who is the ultimate life and business partner. Name: Matt. Someday I’ll do a post about how we met, because what a story that is… but for now – a little about us.

We are passionate. About EVERYTHING. Seriously – we try our best not to do anything we don’t love to do because who wants to do something you don’t want to do?

By far though, one of our biggest passions is learning and using what we learn to live self-sufficiently – as self-sufficient as one can be living in the suburbs of New York City on a 60X100 plot surrounded by highways and a million other people.

We have a tiny little house with a big backyard – gardens, playgrounds, and chickens take up much of that space. We love being outdoors, camping, hiking, canning the fresh food we get from our garden, making our own cheese, foraging berries to make jelly. We love to “garage sale” (yes, a verb).

We are “secondary consumers” – we like to look for handmade, homemade, used, upcycled, recycled and repurposed stuff – all those crunchy-type things that take time and passion to pursue. We have so much passion… not so much time.

When people ask us how we got in to soap making, we tell them - especially if they know all those things I just mentioned about us – it was the next logical skill to learn in our path to sustainability and self-sufficiency… after all – we want to be the family that survives the apocalypse, while being warm, well-fed, and most importantly clean and fragrant.

So we learned. We watched video's, read articles and books, learned about oils and additives and plants and seeds and all the hundreds, maybe thousands of things one can add to a soap to make it fun, colorful, useful, creamy, rich, fragrant, and soothing.

And then we started experimenting. And we never really stopped.

Every recipe is different - which at times, can be annoying - but we want to have something for everyone.

Vegan soap? We got some of those soaps.

Soy-free? We got those too.

People who just like good bubbles and yummy smells? We got you covered.

So, here we are now, making soap for you - soap that we hope that you love and that helps you relax and feel good about what you are putting on your body. Soap that you enjoy using for whatever the many different reasons there are, whether its the smell, the feel, the ingredients, the awesome swirls, or the plain bar.

Soap that we make the old fashioned way. By hand and with lots of love.